Traces of Trust
by Kerrison
Summary: Introspective look at our favorite duo as they suffer through the events surrounding "Aliyah" Spoilers for last few eps & previews for season finale. To be updated w/ remaining chapters as soon as they're completed.
1. Chapter 1

She knew the feel of betrayal well.

Body posture changed, no matter how well trained one was. It was all very instinctual.

Holding a gaze became forced, instead of naturally conversational.

She had felt the tension in him.

She had watched his eyes hold hers for far too long.

She had seen signs. Ziva David was many things; stupid was not one of them.

That night, as she had rested her head on his chest, her heart had fractured. He had muttered a name in his sleep and it wasn't her own. He had refused to put his sig on the nightstand, instead keeping it under his pillow. Even in her bed, he didn't trust... he didn't trust himself enough to let his guard down.

He was on a mission and she had known it for long enough for the hurt to seep into her soul.

Betrayal seemed to be what she was dealt in life. And she was growing tired of the constant mistrust, the ache that came with knowing that she was, yet again, a pawn.

The ache in hear heart had only grown when she had seen the struggle through her curtains that night. She had muttered a quick prayer to god that neither one be hurt. Even with his distance, even with her suspicions, she still cared.

It was a flaw she had fought for years: she cared more than she should about people she should have long since given up on.

She had sprinted up the stairs, her gun drawn and her heart pounding. And before she could get the door open, she felt the fractures in her heart splinter even more; she would never forget his voice.

"Don't do it."

He had given him warning. She couldn't deny that. She had heard Tony try to protect her from the pain, She had heard him try to protect Michael's life.

She had felt her heart stop, her breath catch, and her cringe when the shots were fired. She struggled with the key in the door. And when she saw the bodies there on the floor, she knew she would never be the same.


	2. Chapter 2

She couldn't offer him the words of comfort he needed to hear.

Michael's body was cold in the bag and Tony's eyes begged for absolution.

She couldn't say the words he needed to hear.

The flight from DC to Israel was harder than she had thought. The stoic route had lasted about an hour into the flight when she finally sighed and gave in to every instinct she had; she tucked her feet under her, shifted and rested her head on Gibbs' shoulder.

She was certainly aware that the older man was giving Tony the same empathetic looks he was giving her.

And a part of her was comforted in knowing that Tony would be looked after as she was no longer able to do it. He would be consoled, as much as he permitted himself to be, for the pain he was currently wrestling.

She had permitted herself the small indulgence of Gibbs' fatherly embrace. She had silently taken comfort in the gentle circles he rubbed on her back while she sniffed back as quietly as possible.

And, despite the fact that the sounds of the gunshots – his gunshots – still haunted her day and night, she wished there was someone to offer Tony the same consolation.

He had not signed up for this.

She had.

This was her life. Mossad was her life; this mission was the demon she was dealt at birth.

And with the contagious spread that is mistrust and betrayal, it had taken over his life and she knew the hurt he felt all too well.

Her fingers twitched against the seat as she fought her gut instincts to go sit next to Tony and provide him with some level of consolation. But her soul was at war; her training, her brain, her programming, her mission all told her to stay away.... her heart was urging her to run to his side and share their mutual grief.

How she classified it as 'mutual grief,' she still wasn't sure.

She knew her loss. She had seen possibilities with Michael; even after she recognized his betrayal, she still longed for the life that they could have had. Beautiful children with rich dark hair, long lashes, and impeccable Hebrew. No messy dual citizenships. No juggling Chanukah in one country, Easter in another.

It would have worked beautifully.

And it was the loss of a potentially simple life that she grieved.

And knowing her loss didn't detract from the intuition she had with her partner's feelings; she knew his loss, too. And she refused to make it lesser than her own, no matter what her aching heart said.

He had taken a life before, of course. But never his partner's lover. He had ferreted out espionage ops before. But never one that resulted in the full out destruction of the team that was his family.

His innocence had been shattered in many ways and she knew all too well how painful that was at any age.

She knew his pain steamed from her inability to whisper the dubious phrase "Its ok."

She knew she could ease his ache with just a small smile or even a gentle hand to his shoulder.

And despite knowing that her hands held the key to easing his pain, she couldn't do it.


	3. Chapter 3

Her footfalls echoed on the sidewalk outside of Mossad headquarters and she forced herself to pull up years of Mossad training to firmly put her 'stoic' mask in place.

Abby had once referred to it as her "Xena face," which led to the girls listing the many similarities between the Mossad operative and the ficitonal TV character. They had finally stopped when McGee had come across them in a fierce fit of giggles after Abby had finally referred to her friend as "Ziva: Warrior Princess."

She remembered her Goth friend with a faint twitch of her lips as she felt herself consider smiling for the first time in days.

She longed for Abby's bubbly personality and realized that what she wanted at the moment was one of the bone-crushing hugs that her friend handed out with abandon. The same hugs she initially had been offended by, she now found solace in.

The manila folder was weighty in her hand despite its meager contents. It held her life's next path and she was feeling a bitterness seep into her as she realized she may be forced to leave the life she had become so fond of.

Her dark eyes flicked up and rested on Gibbs' weary face and she dutifully handed over the file, seeing McGee reach into his pocket for his cell phone simultaneously.

"Well?" Gibbs asked her before opening the folder now in his hands.

"I did not look," she said simply.

The older man half-smiled at her; she was honest and had always been respectful of his authority and was incredibly dependable.

_I won't let them take her,_he found himself thinking before he flipped open the file and let his eyes skim the contents.

He sighed and felt his shoulders relax and he turned to McGee. "Let's go call it in; I'll need you to encrypt the files to send back."

"Gibbs," she called before he could turn. She arched an eyebrow in the universal sign for 'Well?'

"Don't unpack, Ziver. You're coming home," he said with a wink before spinning on his heel and heading towards the rental that held McGee's laptop.

She found herself letting out an involuntary sigh and she tucked an errant curl behind her ear.

His voice was soft but clear. And the hesitancy was obvious in his words. "I had no choice," was all he was able to say.

"That's a lie." _There is always a choice_, she thought.

"Why would I lie to you, Ziva?" he said, his voice raw with emotion.

She couldn't keep the fierceness from her voice. "You jeopardized your entire career, and for _what_?"

"For you. He was playing you, Ziva."

_You think I didn't know that? _She thought, her anger sparking into a blaze. "For some reason you felt it was your job? To protect _me_?"

She watched him struggle, his body torn between yelling and giving in.

"I did what I had to do!"

"You killed him!"

Ziva heard the bitter regret in his voice, even if he'd never admit it. "If I hadn't you'd be having this conversation with him. But maybe that's the way you'd prefer it."

"Perhaps I would." The minute the words were out of her mouth, she heard her grandmother's voice in her head reminding her to not say things she didn't mean nor things she couldn't take back.

She watched as that comment pushed his buttons in all the right ways. She watched as he squared his shoulders and stepped forward: "Why don't you just get this out. You wanna take a punch? Take a swing?" She forcibly kept herself from flinching as his voice rose to a yell." Get it outta your system!" He yelled.

She spoke over his words, feeling her body react to the threat on years of honed instinct. "Be careful, Tony."

She felt herself bristle and her weight shift to her fighting stance as he invaded her space, nose to nose.

"Go ahead!" he screamed in her face. "Do it."

There was nothing she could offer to make the storm that had been brewing between them not come crashing down. Yet years of friendship allowed her to utter a very clear and very precise warning: "Be careful, Tony. Because much like Michael, I only need one."

Had she not been in attack-mode, she would have seen the wave of hurt that flicked across his gaze.

"He attacked me! What was I supposed to do?"

She hadn't been able to stop herself. She had felt her body move as he screamed and she realized too late that she had flipped him to the ground and straddled his body, their chests heaving with anger, fear, and adrenaline.

"You saw a glass table, you pushed him back, you dropped him on it. He was impaled in the side by a shard of glass," she paused, willing herself to keep the bile in her throat at bay. The image of her apartment, Michael's blood everywhere, glass everywhere, it caused a wave of nausea to engulf her. "Bloody. Gasping for air.'

His eyes were void of humor when he spoke and, for once, she was glad. "I guess you read my report."

She flinched as emotion made her instinctively reach for her sig holstered at her side. "I MEMORIZED it!" she managed to yell around the emotion thick in her throat. She felt the weight of the gun's handle settle into its familiar spot on her hand.

She found the gun pulled and aimed at his knee and she honestly had no idea how it got there.

"Every word," she added, blinking quickly to keep the tear out of her eye. She felt herself push the barrel into his knee as she spoke. "Wouldn't you have?" she hissed between teeth.

His eyes flicked across her face and the remorse that he had plagued his features for the last few days now suddenly held a darker tone, one filled with regret and understanding.

"You loved him," he stated suddenly.

She felt herself flinch at the statement. "I guess I'll never know," was all she could reply.

She felt a warm presence at her side, one that offered no malice or threat. And she felt a calloused hand close over her own, slowly pulling the gun away from Tony's knee.

Ziva heard a soft voice crooning "hey" and "its ok" into her ear as the gun was taken from her shaking hands.

She vaguely recognized the sounds of McGee's voice as he hauled Tony off the ground and helped his battered friend brush the dust off his slacks.

She felt Gibbs wrap his arms around her body in a fatherly hug and a distant part of her brain recognized that her own father would be berating her for not taking the kill shot, instead of comforting her raw emotions.


	4. Chapter 4

She found herself wrapped in one of Gibbs' paint-stained sweatshirts and her own yoga-pants, padding barefoot down the garden path.

They had quickly vetoed the idea of utilizing the guest quarters at Mossad headquarters, instead having commandeered several rooms at the Embassy.

The courtyard's gardens were always beautiful this time of year.

His figure was stark against the plants and she stopped short, steeling her nerves before coming around and approaching the bench from the side.

He startled slightly, having been lost in his own world and not heard her.

She made a small show of her empty palms. "Unarmed," she said softly.

Tony snickered. "You're never unarmed, Ziva. You've got at least one knife on you at all times," he replied. "And even without that, you're dangerous."

The comment stung more than she knew he had intended; after all it was all factual. But it wasn't the words that hurt, it was his bitter tone.

She stood silently in front of him for another moment before resigning herself to walking back up to her room for a good cry.

And then he finally moved, shifting on the bench and making room for her to join him. It was an unspoken invitation, but one she accepted.

She knew many things she needed to say, but none of them seemed like an appropriate conversation starter.

She was saved the agony of choosing the right words when he spoke first.

"I'm not that guy," he said, in a small whisper, his eyes gazing out over the small water-feature in front of them. The tinkling sound of the water falling down the mini-cascades almost drowned out his muted voice.

"Which guy?" she asked gently.

"The guy who digs up dirt on your boyfriend out of jealousy."

She found herself oddly disappointed by this statement. "I see," she managed to reply.

"I would have been happy for you, if its what you wanted."

Ziva nodded, tucking her wild curls behind her ear. "Tha-" she found herself cut off mid word as he continued.

"You know what, that's a lie," he said firmly. "I wouldn't have been happy for you. I would have been fire-breathing, nut raving pissed off. I would have been scared shitless that one day he was going to wake up and find out his mission was to murder you. Or worse, one day you'd wake up and find out that he'd been screwing around and now you were left heart broken."

"Tony, I-" she started.

"Its a lie, Ziva. I wouldn't have been happy for you," he said again, more firmly. "I would have put on a smile, I would have shut the hell up, and I would have acted like your best friend. But I wouldn't have been happy for you."

"I felt the same way," she whispered, knowing he'd understand her reference to Jeanne.

His eyes flicked to hers quickly, acknowledging the truth in her statement. "But I wouldn't have done this to hurt you," he said again. "I can't... I can't tell you how many times I prayed to whatever god was listening that I was wrong- that he wasn't... I didn't want this."

"I did not want this either," Ziva replied.

"What did you want?"

"What did I want?" She felt herself revert to the old habit of picking the cuticles on her fingers when she was nervous. It was the admission of her deepest desires that she never shared. "Two children and a dog," was her simple statement.

"You lost me," he said with a small chuckle.

"I wanted the family I never had," she said, her voice small and tinged with the fear of judgment. "I wanted to move home and retire and have babies and be bored out of my mind that I wasn't out chasing suspects anymore." She allowed herself a small chuckle at the later part. "I thought perhaps I could have that with Michael."

Tony's eyes regarded her with surprise. "Really?"

She nodded. "It was a nice thought while it lasted. But instead I got yet another man who used me for his own agenda."

He blinked, startled at the jaded words. "Ziva-"

"My father refers to me as the 'sharp end of the sword', Tony. I am nothing to him except a weapon to be used to further his means. Ari betrayed me and our country and used me to assassinate Kate and almost take out Gibbs," her voice wavered with emotion. "And now Michael, who I have known since I was a young girl, decided that our years of loyalty and friendship were worthless compared to the sizable bonus he would have received had he completed his mission."

She sniffed, dejected at the facts she had just layed out. "My fate in life is not for a family, Tony. My fate is to be betrayed by the men in my life."

He sighed and very gently bumped his good shoulder against hers. "Gibbs didn't betray you. Probie didn't betray you."

She managed a small smile. "It is not too late. They have plenty of time," her words tinged with humor as she knew those men would never hurt her.

Tony continued. "And while I know that today might not be the best day to mention it, I would like to point out that I did not, in fact, betray you. I was protecting you."

She sent him a sideways glare, but it wasn't as murderous as it could have been. "You are right; today is not the day to mention it." Ziva watched as his shoulder drooped dejectedly and she continued with a lighter tone to her words: "Remind me in two weeks- I might be over this desire to beat you by then."

He flipped her a thankful and gentle smile and she returned it, hesitantly. He sighed again and wished his arm wasn't confined to a sling, his nervous energy unable to be expelled with just one arm. "For what its worth, Zi, I'm really sorry."

She shifted closer to him on the bench and very hesitantly slipped her arm through the crook of his his, relaxing into their contact. "I know," she said. "Me too, Tony. Me too."


End file.
